I plan to live forever. So far, so good.

The Perseids are back, just like every year. Even though I’m a bit late with the announcement this year (the peak occurred last night, Aug 11th), I’m still a few hours early for tonight’s show, so I hope this helps…

In short, both tonight (Aug 12th) and tomorrow night (Aug 13th), you might want to grab a reclining chair or a blanket, go out in a place outside the city where you have as little surrounding light as possible, and look at the sky. If you have a clear sky, the show will most likely be spectacular.

With the Moon out (Last Quarter Moon occurs 23 hours after the Perseid shower peak), you’ll need a clear, dark sky to see more than just a few Perseids. “Dark” means at least 40 miles from the lights of a large city. You won’t need a telescope – in fact, the eyes alone work best because they provide the widest field of view.

In order to see the Perseids shower, you just have to face east, and look about halfway up. After midnight (around the time of moonrise), you may want to shift your view overhead. Glancing around won’t hurt anything. In addition to your chair/blanket, you can bring some bug spray, cookies/fruit, and a non-alcoholic beverage (alcohol interferes with the eye’s dark adaption as well as the visual perception of events).

How many Perseids will you see? This year, with a half-illuminated Moon in the sky, you can expect to count between 30 and 50 meteors per hour from a dark site during the peak period (Aug 11-13).

More details on NASA’s 2009 Perseids page.

Apparently, this was pretty popular in Russian blogs lately, so I figured it would be fun to post it here as well.

So what you see is what to be said an entry level test leaked from Russian army. Here is the translation: “Six questions that help to identify any hidden psychological diseases young soldier might have. If the soldier can’t see the number in one of the 6 circles on the test picture, the he likely might be having:

Can’t see circle 1: High aggression, proneness to conflict, the recommendation is to add more physical exercise and cold showers.

Can’t see circle 2: Possible low than average intellectual abilities, can’t serve with sophisticated equipment.

Can’t see circle 3: Possible debauchery, soldier should get increased daily ration, should get more physical activity tasks, should not be connected to food supplies, etc.

Can’t see circle 4: Possible inclination to violence, can be assigned as a leader to his unit, as he can preserve discipline.

Can’t see circle 5: Possible latent homosexuality. Can be light uncontrolled accesses of attraction to the same sex.

Can’t see circle 6: Possible schizophrenic tendency. Required additional inspection.

Every soldier should be tested before assignment, according to the order #2299.”

Comet C/2007 N3, also known as Comet Lulin, is a non-periodic comet. It was discovered by Ye Quanzhi and Lin Chi-Sheng from Lulin Observatory on July 11th, 2007. On the morning of January 31, observers estimated the comet’s brightness as magnitude 6.5-7.0 (which means barely visible with the naked eye under close-to-perfect conditions). However, it’s getting closer… and brighter!

How much closer? Comet Lulin’s closest approach will be on February 24th, 2009 at a distance of about 61 million kilometers. Calculations indicate that by then, it will have an apparent magnitude somewhere between 4 and 6, and it’s tail will likely be as long as 8 times the Moon’s diameter.

The most interesting thing about closest approach, however, is the comet’s ridiculously high apparent velocity. Comet Lulin will be speeding along at more than 5° per day! This means that in a telescope or binoculars, one will actually be able to see the comet’s apparent motion against the background stars! This effect is a must-see, and does not present itself often.

The comet will also appear to pass near Saturn on February 23, and near Regulus in Leo on February 26 and 27. You can check out it’s trajectory on the dedicated NASA JPL small-body page.

I returned from TechEd ITPro last night, after a very long and interesting week. Quite a few amazing sessions with Steve Riley, Mark Minasi, Jesper Johansson, Mark Russinovich and many others. Lots of interaction in the “Ask the Experts” area, and plenty of new business opportunities as well.

All in all, the event was a pretty good one. Well, maybe except from the food. But that’s usually a general thing, since I’m a vegetarian. On two of my four flights this past week, the airline (TAROM) apparently “forgot” my previously confirmed request for a vegetarian meal. Even more so, when they brought the food (which was all with meat), I asked them what they can provide instead of that, and I was just told “we’re sorry sir, but we can’t really give you anything else – we’re not vegetarian ourselves!”. I mean, WHAT?!

They did have vegetarian meals at the conference, but I believe people fail to grasp the concept of being a vegetarian. They probably think salads contain enough nutrients, or that they can provide the needed vegetal proteins. But food-related things aside, the conference was a real success in my view.

I have no regret whatsoever as far as the sessions I chose to attend go (we’ll get all the others on a DVD anyway). Most of them were sessions which are a must-see, such as “Do these ten things now or else get 0wn3d!”, “Virtualization and Security: what does it mean for me?”, “How IT will change in the next 10 years and why should I care?”, “Privacy: the why, what and how”, “Q&A – Privacy, to be or not to be”, “It’s the 21st century: time to throw away your medieval gateways”, “The fine art of security panacea, achievable or not?”, “Naked dancing pigs and Werner Heisenberg: how security changes everything”, “The case of the unexplained”, “Anatomy of a hack” and several others, the ones here coming from the speakers I mentioned above.

I didn’t get much time to visit Barcelona, so I don’t have that many pictures. Even so, as soon as I sort them out, I’ll upload them online. I’ve sorted them a bit, so here they are.

The hotel was ok, the main quality being its central location. And again, thanks to Microsoft Romania for providing some very fun and interesting evening meetings all week long!

I’m now looking forward to my white hat hacking lab starting this weekend, since I see that the things are getting pretty hot already by just reading the comments…